Elsewhere

Elizabeth Marie Hall died while riding her bike across the street. She doesn’t think she remembered to look twice before she crossed, but she might have been wrong. Except Liz doesn’t know that she is dead.

Liz wakes up on a boat, with a blurry memory of how she got there. Her only friend is Thandi, the rough but loving girl whom she rooms with on the SS Nile. Everything is different when they land in elsewhere- Liz just wants to go back.

I loved the concept of this book, and the plot. Even though I don’t believe that an afterlife will be anything like elsewhere, I find this an intriguing fantasy. Just read the back-

“Dear Dr. Fujiyama,

By now, you have probably heard that I’m dead. This means I won’t be attending this year’s regional science fair, which is a great disappointment to me as I’m sure it also is for you. At the time I died, I was tarting to make real progress with those earthworms.

I really enjoyed your class and continue to follow along from the place where I’m now living I now find myself.”

That is a must read sentence, the last one. It appears in the middle of the book, but I would have loved the letter as a starter. Though I must say that the prologue is very good.

The only flaw that bothered me was that the tense felt uncomfortable at times. It is present tense, but some sentences jumped out at me as odd not being in past tense.

Oh, by the way, this is definitely a young adult book. I wouldn’t give it to someone under 11.

I’m getting a new book that I am very much excited to receive. It’s A Crooked Kind of Perfect. I’ll post a review of it on Sunday.